I'm confused here, you want to "transport via disk"? Why would anyone want to "transport" anything with the options the internet provides? Obviously SETI has access to the internet. Didn't "disks" go by way of the Dodo birds? Surely they have internet access in West Virginia and a place like the Green Bank Observatory would have at least a T1 line as a minimum.

I'm confused here, you want to "transport via disk"? Why would anyone want to "transport" anything with the options the internet provides? Obviously SETI has access to the internet. Didn't "disks" go by way of the Dodo birds? Surely they have internet access in West Virginia and a place like the Green Bank Observatory would have at least a T1 line as a minimum.

A T1 line is only 1.5Mbit/s, or 180KiB per second, far slower than the average cable or xDSL connection these days.

We're also talking about 40TiB of data that the hard drives can move. If the same amount was transferred over a T1 connection, it would take exactly 7 Years 2 Months 22 Days 11 Hours 27 Minutes 37.57 Seconds to transfer all of the data, and that's ignoring latency and "jitters". That means that for those 7+ years, the connection would be maxed out and unusable for the entire time.

Too slow? Let's get a faster connection! How about a T3 connection running at 44.736Mbp/s? That would take exactly 91 Days 0 Hours 41 Minutes 30.04 Seconds to complete the transfer, again assuming no latency issues crop up.

Still too slow? Let's get a faster connection! How about an OC-3 connection running at 155.52Mbp/s? That would take exactly 26 Days 4 Hours 26 Minutes 9.6 Seconds.

Still too slow? Let's get a faster connection! Let's assume that Green Bank has the funds to afford an OC-12 connection running at a whopping 622.08Mbp/s. That would take exactly 6 Days 13 Hours 6 Minutes 32.4 Seconds to fully transfer the data.

So obviously a dedicated connection would have to be setup so that this maxed out connection does not prevent volunteers from getting more work. A full T1 line still costs over $200/mo. At $200/mo, for 7 years of data transfer, it would cost SETI@Home $17,400 just for the single 40TiB run. If we switched that to the T3 line, that costs about $4000/mo on the low side, so it would cost (91 days = 3 months) $12,000 to transfer the single run. The OC-3 connection is about $20,000/mo on the low side, which is more expensive per bit than the T3 line. The OC-12 connection is typically over $45,000/mo on the low side, making it cost prohibitive to afford using an internet connection.

For this much data, hard drives are probably the most sensible way to go! You only have to pay for the hard drives once, then the shipping back and forth between the two locations.